


Pity

by Island_of_Reil



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Angst, Animal Death (brief), Betrayal, Canonical Character Death, Dubious Consent, First Love, First Time, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lust Potion/Spell, M/M, Manipulation, Mentors, Multiple Orgasms, Non-Linear Narrative, Power Fetish, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:33:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the revethvoran, Cala and his old teacher speak of Dazhis Athmaza… and of Cala himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pity

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up filling [my own kinkmeme prompt](http://tge-kink.dreamwidth.org/678.html?thread=116646#cmt116646). Thanks to [shadow_lover](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_lover) for the great beta job.
> 
> Note that Cala and Dazhis are both 17 years old in the latter two flashbacks of this fic. By the standards of the Ethuveraz, they are not underage.

Cala was too quickly moved to pity, the adults around him had always said. Pity for the hares and grouse his father and uncle brought home from the fields on braces. Pity for the beggar whose “sores” had been painted on, for the whore who picked men’s pockets after her procurer had knocked them senseless. Even pity for the most unredeemable villains in the wonder-tales.

“It made us worry gravely for thee,” Medris Athmaza said, pouring out a glass for Cala the night after the revethvoran. His room was lit by the great ancient Celvazheise candelabra that he employed in the casting of certain spells, and the flames of its candles danced and flickered in the depths of the wine. “That thy profound good nature and compassion might one day blind thee to treachery in those thou loved’st or pitied’st. And we are deeply sorrowed to see our worry was not baseless.”

Cala’s throat tightened and his ears fell. He wanted to demand of the old man, _Why didn’t you warn me, when you were so brilliant a teacher in all other things?_

But he said nothing, merely took up the glass and drank deeply of the strong vintage. He had had the answer from Medris over and over for the last ten years, even before the day he met Dazhis Athmaza: _The failures of a maza are his greatest teachers._

—

Just as a maza was never as grandly or as showily attired as an emperor, the gardens of the Mazan’theileian were not as grandly or as showily laid out as those of the Untheileneise Court. Their beds were largely given over to the cultivation of useful plants, only some of which were flowers. Unless they needed to be pruned for their own or their neighbors’ sakes, they were allowed to grow riotously, rather than regimented into symmetry like their imperial counterparts.

Cala found himself drawn to this peaceful green disorder, just as countless other novices and mazei had been and were. It was not unusual for him to stroll through the gardens and see others seated on the benches or great flat stones therein, meditating so that they might go about their work with clearer heads. It was, however, unusual to spot one boy in a shadowy corner, seated on the paving stones with his arms around his blue-robed knees and his ears flat to his head. His eyes rested on nothing in particular, but his countenance suggested he would have liked to wither all the greenery before him with his glare alone.

A few weeks before, Cala had had his heretofore only glimpse of the newcomer upon the boy’s arrival at the Mazan’theileian. His eyes had been wide, his mouth tight, and his ears as flat as they were now. His street clothes had been pin-neat despite how often they’d obviously been mended, and his hair had been in a smooth queue pinned up off his neck. It was so now, and the maza’s robe pulled tight about his knees was better kempt than any Cala had seen, even those of the Adremaza and the Witness for the Athmaz’are.

Cala’s own robe was not merely shabby: its hem barely reached past his knees now, thanks to the four inches he’d grown in just the last year. A few of his elders had given him the gimlet eye of late and told him to fetch himself a longer one from the Mazan’theileian’s provisioners. But as he was not also acquiring the breadth that caused many novices to burst their shoulder seams, and as the warmth of summer was drawing near, he did not feel it a great priority.

The soft scrape of Cala’s low boots on the stones drew the other boy’s attention. His eyes were a pale amber, and they flicked up and down Cala’s body as if they were trying to measure… something, Cala guessed, other than precisely how tall Cala was. Then they met Cala’s eyes, and the boy’s face went blank, his ears settling into a neutral position.

“Hello,” Cala said, smiling.

“Hello,” the boy replied. He did not return the smile, but he did not look as forbidding as he had a moment before.

“Might I keep thee company?”

The boy shrugged. “An wish’st.” Much like Cala’s, his voice was no longer a child’s but just shy in depth of a man’s. He spoke with the accent of eastern Thu-Athamar, though his consonants were more clipped and precise.

Cala eased himself down onto a stone that had been warming in the sun for a while, facing the other boy. The pale-gold eyes flicked over his bare shins with a hint of what Cala had seen in his teachers’ eyes, but the shard of judgment disappeared immediately into the depths of apparent disinterest.

“How likest this place?” Cala asked.

Another shrug. “Better than my father’s house.”

“More to do here, I imagine, and more folk to talk to.”

“Father had a great many books. Otherwise, aye.”

“‘Had’? Has thy father died?” Cala said with sudden concern.

The other boy gave a huff of a laugh that did not sound as though he were much amused. “Nay,” he said, but he did not elaborate.

There was a twinge in Cala’s chest. His own parents had been proud of the mazeise talents he’d shown from a tender age. Other parents, he’d learned from other novices, were not as pleased when such emerged, threatening to wreck the plans they’d carefully laid for their children. If the children’s gifts were immensely powerful, yet their parents would not let them be taught how to master them, seldom was the outcome happy.

“What are thy talents?” he asked the boy. It was an ordinary question to a novice one did not know well.

The boy’s mouth curved. Although it seemed to bear more pleasure in it than his earlier laugh had borne mirth, Cala was still not sure it could be termed a smile. It did, however, transform his face, giving his nearer cheek a pleasing roundness and softening his lips.

“Mind-spelling,” he said quietly.

“Mind-spelling! That’s not a common talent,” Cala said. “Canst read people’s minds?”

Now the boy did laugh, though a shadow seemed to cling to the sound. “Nay. Not quite, anyway.” He added, as if confiding a great secret, “One can usually tell what people are thinking or what they aim to do an one merely pay close attention to them. But that’s no magic.”

“Nay,” Cala allowed, “’tis not.” He paused, then smiled again. “And some mazei are shit at it, for that matter.”

This time the boy’s ears quivered, and he grinned at Cala. And though his grin was no more pure in its joy than his laugh or his smile, it brought a flush of warmth to Cala’s breast and belly that took him by surprise.

“So, I can’t read minds,” the boy said. “I can…. sway thoughts, though. Lead people to see what’s not there, and conceal from them what is. I can make them fall asleep and keep them awake, too.”

“Useful gifts,” Cala said, with genuine admiration.

The boy’s answering smile was mischievous, as close to any other boy’s as Cala had yet seen. “They were useful when I wished to escape my lessons. Or steal out of bed to… meet with a friend.” His golden eyes were warmer now, and fixed more intently on Cala. “What are _thy_ talents?”

“Fire’s the strongest one,” Cala replied, feeling his cheeks grow warm as well. “I’ve some modest weapon-gifts, too.”

The boy lifted one white brow. “Couldst cast a revethmaz someday?”

Cala’s smile faltered. “I don’t know. I hope I never need to.”

The other boy blinked in confusion. “Mightst aim to be a nohecharis when art finished with thy studies?” he asked.

It was Cala’s turn to laugh quietly, and he ducked his head. “Maybe someday, after His Serenity has gone to Ulis and his nohecharei with him. But that won’t be for many years yet. If one of his nohecharei dies before him, or when his son succeeds him, I’m sure there’ll be other mazei fit to serve him.”

“Not many are dachenmazei, though,” the boy said. “And weapon-gifts are dachenmazeise gifts.”

“Well, I’d have to work on those,” Cala said, still looking at the stones beneath the arch of his legs. “They don’t come as easily to me as the fire-talent.”

There was a moment of silence. Then the boy said thoughtfully, “My father never said a lot that mattered. He did say, though, that naught worthwhile is easily had. Medris Osmaza said something like that the other day, too. So maybe my father was right.”

Cala thought of sayings he’d heard about broken clockworks being correct twice a day, or blind suncats quarrying a snake now and again. But it would be rude of him to slur this boy’s father, as little regard as the boy himself seemed to have for the man. Instead he said, in all honesty, “Medris Osmaza is a good teacher, I think.”

“He’s not dachenmaza himself, is he?” the boy asked.

“Nay, but didst not say a moment ago that mazeise talents aren’t all that matter?” Cala said drily.

Both the boy’s eyebrows rose now, and he gave Cala a long, considering look. Cala’s body grew warm again under its intensity. To break the sudden awkward silence, he said, “I’m Cala. How art called?”

This time, the boy’s smile was as warm and golden as his eyes. “I, Cala, am called Dazhis.”

—

What Cala asked Medris instead was, “When did you first see… the signs?”

Medris had walked to the window of his room, and now he stared out into the frigid night with his hands clasped behind his back. The snow had begun again in earnest, and the wind drove it into the pane with soft _pit-pit-pits_.

“In Dazhis?” he finally answered. “When first he came to the Athmaz’are.” There had already been a sharpness to his voice, and now it deepened in disgust as well. “Hast ever seen a musician in a luthier’s shop? How he looks to this fiddle, to that lute, assessing which one he’ll be able to play to the fullest, make it speak for him and him alone? That, Cala, was Dazhis Athmaza from the first day he set foot in the Mazan’theileian.”

Even now, Cala found himself wanting to protest that Dazhis had been young, raised by hostile parents, alone and uncertain in his strange new home. And then he remembered, as he had remembered over and over in the last night and the last day, words spoken in a garden ten years before. He shuddered and closed his eyes.

After a few seconds he opened them again, and he stared at the glass of wine in his hand, now mostly empty, as if he had never seen one before in his life. “Did you ever think he would…” Cala trailed off.

“… betray his nation, his emperor, and his fellow nohecharei?” Medris finished for him. Cala, throat once more constricted, could only nod in reply.

Medris himself shook his great shaggy head; he had always eschewed queues or braids. “Schemers and liars are as common as grass. Few ever turn traitor. Not that they are great lovers of their countries, but the risks are extreme, often deemed not worth the effort by even the most ambitious. When they do turn their coats, it is quite often at the invitation of other traitors who promise to reward them richly — as was the case with Dazhis.”

“Opportunity,” Cala said hollowly.

“Yes. Opportunity.”

Cala pinched the bridge of his nose above his spectacles. Even had he been sufficiently collected of mind to accompany His Serenity to the Lesser Courtyard the night before, he knew he could never have watched the revethvoreis’atha slide through flesh he had once pressed his lips against. He thanked Cstheio Caireizhasan that the shift had been Kiru’s and Telimezh’s instead — and that, as Dazhis’s treason had not wronged Cala directly, Dazhis had not been obliged to beg his forgiveness.

Yet at the same time he regretted these things, for he had one question that remained unanswered. He had considered pulling Telimezh aside for a few moments that morning as their shifts changed, but the Second Nohecharis’s face had been as white and hard as a death’s head, and his eyes had blazed with cold fire. And to ask His Serenity was utterly out of the question.

At last, he asked his old teacher, “Do you think, Osmaza, he might have regretted his actions in the end?”

Medris laughed. The sound was short and, for him, uncharacteristically harsh. “The canons will never tell of his last moments, and neither will Sehalis. But we would wager all our powers on this, Cala: Dazhis Athmaza regretted only that he had been caught.”

—

“Art ready, Cala?” Medris Athmaza asked. He stood a short distance away, along with four broad-shouldered manservants.

Cala nodded, breathed in deeply, tilted his head backward, raised his hands, and whispered seven words.

The crack, even though he’d precipitated it, made him jump, and the ozone was sharp and sour in his nostrils. The boar lay in a massive, boneless heap of fat and filth on the grass. Its fellow pigs, still in their pen not far away, squealed and screeched in terror and grief.

“Well done, lad.”

“Thank you, Osmaza, but… I wish we could have done this further from the pen,” Cala said ruefully as he shook out his hands. The very bones within them seemed to sting. “They are intelligent beasts, and they understand what has happened. Or that we could have used a goose instead.” Geese were stupid, vicious creatures that tasted just as good as swine on the dinner table.

“The next time thou or another novice practices the revethmaz, we shall keep thy former point in mind. As to thy latter, pigs are much more like elves and goblins in body than are geese, and thus they are far better suited for a revethmazeise novice to practice on.” More kindly, Medris continued, “Know’st the creature suffered less than it would have had the butcher slaughtered it instead: it never knew its death was coming.”

“Yes, Osmaza,” Cala said, ears at half-mast. Another maza might have narrowed his eyes at Cala for questioning his methods, even cuffed him across the head or twisted his ear. Medris Athmaza did not brook disrespect, but nor did he define it as broadly as other mazei did. More than once Cala had heard him say, _Use not force when reason will do._

The manservants came forward to gather up the dead boar; they would bring it to the butchery in the kitchens of the Untheileneise Court, then return with meat for the tables of the Mazan’theileian. Medris, too, approached, and clapped Cala lightly on the shoulder. “As we said, well done. Thou art dismissed for the day. The revethmaz will have drained thee of thy energies somewhat, which leaves thee vulnerable to malign influences; canst study thy books tonight, but we do not recommend casting any more spells until the morrow.”

“Osmaza,” Cala said again, executing the quarter-bow with which Medris Athmaza was usually satisfied. The maza strode off toward the library. Cala turned toward the dormitories, nearly in the opposite direction.

The common washroom was an enormous, echoing space full of tubs and basins, with drains set in its floor. Its steamy air rang with the splash of water. Servants with buckets went in and out, and the first handful of novices and mazei were entering to wash up for dinner. Cala headed for a distant corner. Conversation was never expected in the washroom, but he did not feel at this moment like having anyone at his side.

He set his spectacles on the stand beside a basin, then plunged his face into the hot, soapy water. When he raised his head again, water and suds dripped onto his robe from his ears and from the loose strands of hair around his face. His reflection in the mirror was blurred with steam and with his own short sight, though he could see the red of his cheeks from the water’s heat. He imagined he looked like a monster from a wonder-tale, dredged up from the bottom of a fearful sea.

“Cala?”

He turned so quickly that the ear closer to Dazhis sent soapy droplets flying into the other boy’s face. Dazhis brushed them off with a grimace. “Sorry,” Cala said.

“’Tis fine,” Dazhis said, and then the grudging note left his voice. “I hear thou’st slaughtered a boar. With a maz, I mean. Is’t true?”

“Aye.” Half-blind though Cala was without his spectacles, he thought Dazhis’s eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Perhaps Cala had gotten soap in them when he spun about.

“What… what was it like, to be able to do that?”

“It hurt my hands,” Cala said shortly. He took the short towel from the nearby rack and scrubbed his face with it.

“Nay, I meant… how did it feel, in thy mind and heart? That couldst do that?” There was an odd softness to Dazhis’s voice, something weirdly like reverence. It did not sit comfortably with Cala. He couldn’t say why; after all, a revethmaz was no small thing to master, and revethmazei were rightly feared. 

He replaced the towel on the rack and his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. Then he peered at his friend through lenses that had become much thicker in the three years since they’d met. “I didn’t care for it, in sooth. I’d fain have killed a creature with less sense than a pig, but even then I don’t think I would’ve taken joy in it.” He shrugged. “’Tis a talent. Cstheio, or perhaps Ulis, gave it to me for reasons known only to them. As Medris Osmaza says, I’m obliged to hone it for whatever purposes the gods may have for me.”

Dazhis’s face had gone blank. He blinked a few times, then said, “Well, thou’rt compassionate.” It did not sound greatly complimentary, but Cala was accustomed to being called too soft-hearted for his own good.

He decided to change the subject. “Thy mind-spells. How does it feel to cast them? Does it bring thee joy?”

The pale-gold eyes went strangely bright again, but for just a moment. Dazhis’s words were measured and solemn. “I find joy in seeing my own handiwork well done, especially after much practice. And if the mind-spell accomplishes goals beyond that, so much the better.”

“That makes sense,” Cala said.

And then something moved in the depths of his mind. A question gone unanswered these three years, a subject he had never considered broaching with Dazhis. Noting that the washroom had grown more crowded in the last several minutes, he said, “Art coming to my room after dinner again, for study?”

Dazhis gave him a grin that at first made Cala blush, then made him think, _I did say ‘for study,’ did I not?_ “I am,” he said.

—

“Did you know,” Cala said with a casualness he did not feel, “that Dazhis and I were… not merely friends?”

“Of course we knew.” Medris Athmaza’s tone were as if he’d just been asked about yesterday’s weather. “It was no secret. Not that there are many secrets of that kind in the Athmaz’are.”

“Did you also know—” Cala finished off his wine again in one swallow. “—that he ceased to seek my bed the moment we two were appointed nohecharei to Edrehasivar?”

Medris’s face went sad and soft. “Needst not tell us this, Cala, if want’st not.”

Cala flushed. “I’m sorry, Osmaza. I don’t mean to burden you with—”

“Oh, do not be sorry.” Medris waved his left hand as he picked up the decanter with his right. “An there be a purpose to telling us of thy heart’s ache, we will hear it. We have heard, and told, far worse tales in our time.”

Cala managed a small smile at that. Watching Medris refill the glass for him, he said, “He didn’t jilt me, precisely. But he did cease to seek me out privately. When I cornered him to broach the subject, he made some noises about our opposite shifts and his desire to devote himself wholly to guarding His Serenity. I wasn’t entirely convinced: nohecharei are not bound to celibacy, and many have dallied with one another regardless of shift. But I chose to let it go. I too was getting accustomed to my new role, and the sadness over Dazhis was soon offset with many joys.”

“Edrehasivar is an easy man to serve,” Medris remarked.

“He is that. And the others who serve him most closely aren’t the worst of companions, either.” Then Cala laughed grimly. “Save one, I suppose.”

Medris did not reply to that. Cala went on: “The very first night he exchanged duties with me, he scolded me not to be so absentminded I’d forget to sleep. Earnestly, not teasingly, and before His Serenity and his secretary and both soldier-nohecharei. Had it been from anyone else I wouldn’t have minded. But I was galled, Osmaza — he seemed to wish me aloud out of his sight, to my own bed without him. Of course, I didn’t show it. And, of course, he’d said nothing that was not, strictly speaking, improper.”

“Dazhis always was one for propriety,” Medris said drily. “Impressed Sehalis greatly, it did.”

Cala’s next laugh was one of even less mirth. He remembered, then, how Dazhis’s smiles and laughter had lacked it by their nature — unless he’d sought to sway another’s mind. Something burned at the bottom of his throat, and he tried to chase it with the wine, to no avail.

“I replied to him that he needn’t have feared; I was not made of stone. I said it easily enough that, I’m sure, the others didn’t take from it the meaning I intended Dazhis to.”

He sighed, then, and put down the glass that he could put his head in his hands. “Osmaza… do you know how he….” He swallowed, and when next he spoke his voice was very small. “… how he first beguiled me?”

—

A maza in the final year of his novitiate was given a room to himself. In keeping with his vow of poverty, the room was a small, sparse affair, holding only a chest of drawers, a bookshelf, a small desk with a simple chair, and a long and narrow bed.

Cala and Dazhis sat cross-legged at opposite ends of Cala’s bed, boots kicked to the floor, books open in their laps. For near to an hour they studied in silence, broken only by the creak of a spring as one or the other shifted position, and once by a question from Dazhis to Cala about a theorem of Hanevis Athmaza’s.

It was far from the first time they’d studied together in either Cala’s room or Dazhis’s. But the silence between them now was thick and heavy. Though it had grown more so over the last year, tonight it sat on Cala’s skin uncomfortably, with a buzzing, prickling sort of feel.

He was not, he knew, a comely boy, nor one with an appealing physique. He did not lack for friends — he had a fair number more than Dazhis did, in fact, and closer friends at that. He had shared drunken kisses and more with other novices on festival nights. But none had ever kissed him fully sober, much less beckoned him so to bed, or to any of the hidden places about the Mazan’theileian where lovers might tryst.

Many a time he had thought Dazhis might wish to, by the glint in his eye or the sudden sweet curve of his mouth. But Dazhis had never asked — and Cala knew from gossip that Dazhis was no stranger to the beds of other boys.

 _Does he want me?_ Cala had wondered often. _Does he hesitate to risk our friendship? Would he have me were it not for others he wants more? Does he — do the others — fear to bed one who could kill them with a wave of his hand and a few muttered words?_

These were not questions he was minded to ask anyone, least of all Dazhis. Perhaps, when he had concluded his studies and the wider world opened up to him, he would find a lover. For now he simply thanked the gods each night that he had a room all his own, that none could hear him tug himself to completion before sleep. As he did so, he always pictured golden eyes lighting on his gawky naked form with lust instead of disdain, and soft, curved lips trailing their way down his bony chest and sunken belly. Lips that never had the chance to linger overlong between his thighs before he would whimper, teeth sunk deep in his bottom lip, and spill over his own hand.

Even the question now on his mind was one he’d always hesitated to ask Dazhis. The other novice had ever been guarded about his past; he’d only ever mentioned his family to Cala the first time they had met. Cala, not wishing to probe at a sore spot, had never raised the subject again.

Now, he said hesitantly, “Dazhis?”

“Hm?” came the half-attentive reply.

“An dost not wish to tell me, ’tis fine…” Cala started, then broke off uneasily, ears lowering.

Dazhis’s head came up, and he frowned, though his eyes seemed to glow softly in the muted light of the candle by the bed. “What want’st thou to know?”

Cala began again. “Hast only ever mentioned thy family the first time we met. And … didst not speak of them fondly.”

Dazhis stared at him for so long that Cala feared he had overstepped himself. Then he said, “’Tis true I bear no fondness for them.” And he laughed, and the sound were as if he were hauling bitterness up from a deep well of it inside him. Cala resisted the impulse to squirm. He had not heard Dazhis speak so since first they met, and he regretted having asked the question.

Then Dazhis said, “Why ask’st me of them now, Cala?”

Cala said slowly, “Before dinner, thou asked’st me whether I took joy in casting the revethmaz. And saidst that didst enjoy casting mind-spells, in thy own way. It reminded me, Dazhis, that told’st me when first we met of casting them upon thy family, before thou camest to the Mazan’theileian — and that seemed’st pleased at thine ability to do so.”

After a pause, Dazhis said, “Thou wish’st to know whether I took joy in deceiving my family.” When Cala flushed red and did not reply, Dazhis continued quietly: “Again, why?”

Cala looked down at and toyed with the hem of his robe a moment. Then he gathered himself and looked up at Dazhis again. “Thou seemed’st, well, enraptured with the thought that I could perform a revethmaz. That confused me, for I don’t find it pleasing to kill. I’m not even sure I would find it pleasing to deceive others, even if I must accept the necessity. I would understand thee better, Dazhis. After all…” He breathed in deeply. “…I’m thy friend.”

At first, Dazhis merely said, so softly Cala thought he might be imagining it: “Thou art that.”

He was silent a moment. Then he said, slightly less quietly, “I am from Vesicho, a small town in the east of Thu-Athamar. It was once an unremarkable farming village. Then a school for the sons of middling merchants was built there — or, should I say, it was founded in an old and especially grand farmhouse, and the acreage about it was made into playing fields. My father was its schoolmaster.”

“Again, say’st ‘was,’” Cala said. “But thy father lives, doesn’t he?”

“Last I saw him, he was alive and well,” Dazhis said curtly. “That was three years ago.” He blew out his breath, and he pinned Cala with a golden gaze that made Cala ache with hurt and desire all mixed together. “Wilt excuse me if I haven’t kept in correspondence with a man who beat me daily, using the same strap he applied freely to his pupils.”

The desire fled. “I am sorry,” Cala murmured.

Dazhis did not acknowledge the expression of sympathy. He was staring into a darkened corner now, ears tight to his head. Slowly, he continued: “My father envied the boys he taught. Vesicho is hardly Ashedro; he taught them practical knowledge, the social graces, and just enough of other things to let them converse a bit with the betters they would someday provision. But that was more than my father had been able to take for granted as a boy. He’d had to scratch and scrape for every bit of knowledge and comportment he possessed, and he resented those who did not have to.”

“And who would have taken them for granted,” Cala said.

“Aye.” There was a roughness to Dazhis’s voice now. “So he and my mother wanted my brothers and me to ‘come up in the world,’ as they put it. To _become_ merchants, not to tutor merchants’ shiftless or dim-witted sons. And my sisters to find respectable merchants to marry.

“‘Coming up in the world’ did not encompass mazeise powers or the mastery thereof. A vow of poverty, a threadbare robe, the loss of the family name, the inability to bequeath a single copper — _had_ one a single copper — to one’s kin?” Dazhis chuckled, soft and cynical. “One might say the opposition was understandable in a father of eight who’d grown up poor. Me, I say he and my mother would have cared only for wealth and appearance, no matter how much he claimed to esteem learning more, had they been as rich as the Tethimada.”

Cala had thought that broaching the question of Dazhis’s family would somehow settle the uncomfortable feeling along the skin of his limbs, neck, and back. To his dismay, it had instead grown stronger, causing all the hairs to stand on end. Something in him sensed that Dazhis was not finished, that he held within him further secrets like live coals he had to cast from him lest he burn. And it was Cala’s duty to hear them. _I’m thy friend,_ he’d told Dazhis, after all.

“Did he beat thee for wishing to become a maza?” he asked hoarsely. Dazhis’s head turned at that, and Cala all but reeled from the force of his eyes.

“Did he beat me,” Dazhis said bitterly. “‘Beat,’ somehow, does not suffice to describe it. At first it was a blackened eye and a ringing ear, and some hair ripped from my scalp. Then it was a mouthful of blood and a tooth floating about in it. Then I found I could not stand up from where I’d fallen. By the time I fell unconscious I could hear my elder brother and one of the younger ones crying out ‘Papa, stop!’ and trying to pull him off me. And they’d never had much love for me, I tell thee true.”

Cala could not make any noise, not even a squeak of shock.

Dazhis’s gaze had returned to the darkened corner. When next he spoke, his voice was not bitter and lacerating but hollow and detached. 

“I woke up in my own bed the next day. No one had sent for a doctor; I think my father feared for his position at the school, were word to have gotten out. Taking a strap to an unruly boy is one thing, beating him half to death quite another. One of my sisters tended me for a week, bearing meal trays and emptying slops and checking my wounds. My brothers washed me twice. When I finally was up and about again, my father told me that if I wanted to be a maza so badly I could gather up what little I had to my name and depart for the Mazan’theileian, but I would never again be welcome in his house.”

He gave a soft chuff that Cala only belatedly realized was a laugh. “He’d meant it as a threat, an ultimatum. I saw it as… no such thing.”

Dazhis closed his eyes and drew air into his lungs. When he released it, the breath stuttered, and his chest shook. It was not until the sob of the next inhalation that Cala realized Dazhis was weeping.

“Dazhis… merciful goddesses.” Without thought Cala scrambled to the other end of the bed and grasped Dazhis’s shoulders. The other boy’s arms went around him, his face against Cala’s chest, and Cala embraced him in turn. He could feel his robe grow wet over his breast, and the shudders that went through Dazhis’s torso.

“I… I’m sorry,” Dazhis said, thick and rheumy, and he sniffled.

“Why art sorry?” Cala’s arms tightened about him. “Thou’st kept thy silence these three years. It must have eaten at thee terribly.”

The prickling of Cala’s skin was not mitigated by Dazhis’s confession. To the contrary, it were as if he pressed a hive of bees to his breast. Dazhis was warm in his arms, his braid sleek and soft under Cala’s hand, and when a fingertip of his traced absently along Cala’s spine, Cala twitched sharply. He realized he was growing hard; his ears quivered, and he swallowed audibly and dug his teeth into his lower lip.

Dazhis repeated the stroke. And then he repeated it a third time.

“Dazhis…?” Cala began, uncertain even of the question he wished to ask.

“Yes?” Dazhis said guilelessly.

“I… I am sensitive there, is all,” Cala muttered. Maybe Dazhis was just absently toying with whatever was to hand. Maybe the coarse texture of the robe was soothing to his fingertip. The simplest explanation, as Medris Athmaza had always taught his students to seek.

He thought he was imagining it at first, too, when Dazhis replied, the words carried on the softest of breaths: “Art thou?”

But those words did not become real until the fingertip, pressing more firmly now, drew as far down Cala’s spine as Dazhis could reach — and then back up the length of it, and his entire hand cupped the back of Cala’s neck. Cala choked off a gasp. Dazhis reached up, smiling softly, and gently drew the spectacles off Cala’s face. He turned for a moment to set them down, neatly folded, beside the candle. Then he turned back to Cala and pulled his head down, level with his own.

Cala was ashamed of the small cry he let escape, a sound smothered by Dazhis’s mouth on his — but then it drew a desperate murmur of response from Dazhis, who plied his tongue more aggressively within Cala’s mouth. They broke apart only to come back together with even more vigor, the kiss growing wetter and deeper, and Dazhis’s hands undoing the single ribbon that held Cala’s queue. It disappeared, and Dazhis’s fingertips were in his hair, against his scalp, stroking, tingling, buzzing. Cala, fingers having lost all dexterity, pulled futilely at the ribbons binding Dazhis’s braid.

“Cala — let me,” Dazhis said huskily, easing backward from him. Within five seconds all three ribbons were floating down to the rough planks of the floor, and Dazhis was loosing his bright hair over his shoulders and down his back. Cala nearly dived at him, clamping his mouth hot and clumsy over Dazhis’s, tightening his prickling fingers into the silken tumble of Dazhis’s hair. Against his own face he could feel the curve of Dazhis’s cheek, still slightly moist with tears, and of Dazhis’s lips. Then Dazhis was the master of him once again, his tongue like a weapon in Cala’s mouth, his hands tingling against Cala’s skin through his robe as they grasped and clutched at his shoulders and back.

He broke off the kiss to whisper, “Hast ever done this before?” Cala shook his head wildly; Dazhis took his head between his hands and grinned. “Ah, canst kill a man with a wave of thy hands, but hast never fucked one, or been fucked by one? Thou’rt so impossibly desirable, Cala.”

“Am I?” Cala said, dazedly and huskily.

“Aye.” Dazhis’s reddened eyes glowed with a hot, diffuse light that touched every inch of Cala’s skin, bringing the buzzing sensation to a pitch at which it nearly keened. “And I’ll be thy first,” he whispered. “Revethmaza.”

The word could not douse Cala’s ardor but it struck a note of discord deep within him. “I’m no revethmaza yet,” he muttered, dropping his gaze. He wondered why Dazhis would want to temper the heat between them so.

“But thou’lt be one someday,” Dazhis whispered, and then Cala had no answer to that for Dazhis had his entire left ear in his mouth and Cala was _moaning_ , long and wanton, earlier shame forgotten. He’d heard from loose talk that hands and mouths could wring pleasure from parts of the body that were perfectly meet to show in public, but to feel it was another thing entirely. Dazhis was playing with his other ear, too, long, soft, tingling strokes that turned Cala’s legs to jelly and made him thankful he wasn’t standing.

“Mmm, so sensitive,” Dazhis murmured against the quivering inner surface of the ear he’d been sucking. “Saidst thy back was sensitive, too? Could I make thee spend were I to lick my way up thy spine — or down it, perh—”

“I — _stop,”_ Cala begged. He’d begun to shake. “I can’t last, Dazhis—”

“Needst not last,” Dazhis said with a smirk and a soft, knowing laugh — and suddenly his hand dropped from Cala’s head to between his legs, under his robe, and was— was _cupping_ him— his hand nearly sparking against the sensitive skin with the energy it seemed to contain— 

Cala leaned back on his palms, threw back his head, and gave a strangled cry as he spent in Dazhis’s hand. Eyes closed, he panted for a long moment… and then realized he was still hard.

“I told thee,” Dazhis said triumphantly. He raised his hand to his mouth and, eyes locked on Cala’s, slowly licked every drop of seed from his fingers. He made a deliberate show of his tongue while doing so, then plunged two of his fingers so deep into his mouth they had to have touched the back of his throat. Cala stared like a deer caught in a hunter’s torch. Spending seemed not to have taken the edge off his lust at all but to have honed it: all of him, not just his cock and balls, throbbed with a mad desperation for release.

“Is’t a cantrip?” he asked, the words coming out thick and slurred. Dazhis nodded and hummed around his own fingers. Cala croaked, “Thou’lt cost me my senses.”

Slowly, Dazhis pulled his fingers from his mouth. There was a wet pop as the tips emerged. “’Twill be worth it,” he said assuredly. “Trust me, ‘tis safe; I’ve cast it many times before.” Cala, who had never thought not to trust him, could only nod.

Dazhis hopped off the bed, bent to grasp the hem of his robe, and pulled it smoothly over his head. With a few practiced motions he folded it neatly, letting Cala appreciate the flex of lean muscle in his arms and chest. Once he’d laid it on the nearly desk, he hooked his fingers into the waistband of his linens and, with teasing slowness, drew them down his thighs.

The shaft of his cock was thick and heavily veined, the head a deep rose-pink and looking as though it were velvet to the touch. Cala reached out for it, but Dazhis caught his wrist and pressed his knuckles to his own lips, which crackled against Cala’s skin like the air before a summer storm. “Wilt not let me see thee, too?” he murmured, and behind Cala’s fingers his mouth curved again.

Cala got to his feet as well, not with half the grace Dazhis had shown. He hauled his robe up over his head in one quick motion, tossed it in the opposite direction from the candle, and yanked down his linens. As he stepped out of them, Dazhis closed the gap between them, pulling Cala’s head down with his left hand while scraping the tips of his neatly manicured right-hand fingernails over Cala’s nipples. Cala whimpered into his mouth and pushed his own hand between their bodies.

Touching Dazhis was just like touching himself, and not like it at all. The motions were the same — sliding the foreskin up and down, running the thumb over the head, swiping across the sensitive spot beneath. But it was new, and good, to feel another’s heat and rigidity filling his hand, and the strange vibrations under the skin along with the familiar pulse; to watch Dazhis’s head loll back on his neck and his erect ears quiver and his eyes close; to hear him emit a soft moan from between parted lips. His hips bucked against Cala’s hand, and Cala tightened his grip for the reward of watching a shudder rack Dazhis’s body.

When Dazhis raised his head again, his eyes poured sweet, scalding honey over Cala. “Wish’st to fuck me?” he whispered, almost hissed.

Cala almost finished again on the spot. “Does— is—” He chewed on his inner cheek to pull himself together. “I’ve no idea what to do, I don’t wish to hurt thee—”

Dazhis laughed softly at that. “Ah, mine innocent little death-dealer. Or not-so-little, either in height or—” He squeezed Cala’s cock gently, and Cala’s body jerked. “—in other things. I’ve taken enough cocks to know what I’m about, and thou’st taken none. I’ll show thee how to open me up for thee. And then I’ll ride thee, Cala. I’ll ride thee ’til I make thee spend again, and a third time, and a fourth, and more.”

“I could spend again _now_ just from thy words,” Cala groaned, urgently pushing Dazhis’s hand away.

“And each time thou’lt get hard right away once again.” It was, possibly, the most obscene thing Cala had ever heard promised, certainly the most obscene thing _he’d_ ever been promised.

Dazhis turned from him to crouch on the floor and rummage in his rucksack. Cala eyed the muscular globes of his buttocks, thrust out so that they were displayed to fullest advantage, before Dazhis straightened with a small flask in his hand. He pulled its cork out, and a soft, warm scent filled the small room. Cala’s nostrils twitched. “What is’t?”

“Oil, scented with spices from Barizhan.”

“Dost… always carry scented oil about with thee?” Cala asked a little weakly.

“Often.” The word was equal parts breezy and enigmatic as both of them climbed back onto the bed. Dazhis crouched and spread his knees far apart. Cala, kneeling before him, stared in fascination at the little pink opening between his buttocks, the surrounding skin shorn of all hair. “Give me thy hand, Cala.” Cala held his right hand out. Dazhis tilted the flask, decanting some of the oil into his palm. “Coat thy forefinger well, and then ease it into me slowly.”

The first surprise was how _hot_ the inside of another’s body was. The second was how tightly Dazhis’s flesh clung to Cala’s finger. The rumbling, vibrating feeling was by now no surprise at all. It was impossible not to imagine his cock sheathed in Dazhis instead, especially when Dazhis sighed with pleasure and arched his hips again and again. “Another finger, Cala,” he said, his voice thick and his eyes blazing. “Please.”

Cala managed to get more oil onto his middle finger, and then he was working it into Dazhis alongside his forefinger. Dazhis clenched his jaw and screwed his eyes shut, and Cala wondered if he should stop, but Dazhis gritted out, “Deeper,” and Cala pushed, pushed, _pushed_ until both fingers were completely enveloped. “Move them back and forth inside me,” Dazhis rasped, and it surprised and inflamed Cala to discover it much easier than he’d imagined.

It inflamed him further to see Dazhis begin to buck against his hand again, moving his hips in small, controlled circles. He bore a look of concentration that suggested to Cala he was seeking something — and when his eyes widened and his mouth fell open, and energy stuttered down the lengths of Cala’s buried fingers, Cala knew he had succeeded.

“Know’st what that was, Cala?” Dazhis breathed. “Canst feel a tiny knot of flesh within me, a few inches in?”

Cala had felt _something_ , but he’d not known what it could be, and he hadn’t been sure how much he could explore without inadvertently hurting Dazhis. Now, given leave, he prodded gently against Dazhis’s inner walls until he felt the little node, and then he hurried to obey Dazhis’s command: “Crook thy finger and stroke it—” Another burst of power, as though lightning had struck the tips of Cala’s fingers and traveled all the way up his arm. “Ah, _aye_ , Cala, ah, so good,” Dazhis moaned, “hast so much power in thy fingers.”

Dazhis was supporting himself with one hand as he rocked back and forth on Cala’s, and his other slid up and down his own cock, which dripped with clear seed. Cala realized dimly he’d begun to stroke his own cock with his free hand, in time with Dazhis’s thrusts as he fucked himself on Cala’s fingers.

Suddenly Dazhis’s eyes flew open, and he growled, “Pull out and lie back.” Cala, gnawing on the inside of his cheek again, complied hastily. Dazhis straddled his hips, crouching low and wide, then settled himself so that the head of Cala’s cock rested against his hole. And began to bear down.

Cala could barely breathe. Feeling more and more of himself gripped in that tight, hot, silken, vibrating passage of flesh, watching Dazhis’s face contort with ecstasy, watching Dazhis’s sinewy body jolt and his cock swell as Cala brushed against the little spot inside him… “Dazhis,” he gasped, and suddenly his teeth in his inner cheek were of no avail: he was rushing headlong toward climax again, hips bucking helplessly as he spurted inside Dazhis’s body. He’d no sooner collapsed against the bed when he realized, as Dazhis had promised, that once again his cockstand had persevered.

Hazy golden eyes lit on him, and then Dazhis was moving, rocking back and forth, squeezing and compressing Cala’s now painfully rigid cock within him, reaching forward to rub and pinch at Cala’s nipples. “Oh, my beautiful revethmaza,” Dazhis groaned, and the novelty of being called _beautiful_ crowded all reservations about being called _revethmaza_ out of Cala’s head. Dazhis ground down harder against Cala’s hips. “Fuck me, Cala. Push upward into me.”

It was awkward at first, working against both gravity and Dazhis’s weight. But Dazhis would rock forward as Cala thrust upward, then settle back onto him fully as Cala subsided back to the bed. It took no more than three strokes for them to settle fully into the rhythm. The bedsprings began to complain vigorously, counterpointed with the smacks of their bodies coming together, and the oleaginous sound of Cala moving within Dazhis laced through it all. Cala thought that, other than the wanton words Dazhis had spoken, these might have been the most arousing things he had ever heard.

 _“Dazhis—”_ And Cala spent again, and he was instantly hard again, and, gods, it _hurt_ and he wanted it to stop, and, goddesses, it felt _so good_ and he hoped it never stopped.

He lost count of his climaxes after a while, and, then, of Dazhis’s. The sensations of the sheet beneath him growing sodden with sweat and seed and oil, of Dazhis’s emissions pooling warm and sticky in the hollow of Cala’s belly, were swallowed up in the boundlessness of the pain-pleasure. Its heated edge scored and sliced through every inch of his flesh, and for a fleeting moment Cala pictured the revethvoreis’atha. This was far more thorough a blade than the one of ritual self-destruction, and far crueler. But even as it kindled and fanned the harrowing ecstasy that Dazhis had set alight in him, like the revethvoreis’atha it pared away all shame.

He was vaguely aware he was begging — _please, Dazhis, please_ — and he wasn’t even sure if he were begging Dazhis to stop, or to continue, though each of his balls felt scorched dry from the inside out and he was literally unsure he would rise from his bed with his cock still fast to his body. The pain-pleasure was mostly pain now, then all pain, and Cala’s eyes were brimming, the tears running down both sides of his face to wet the pillow beneath him. Dazhis’s eyes were still hot on him, but softening, blinking; Dazhis’s cock released a trickle of seed and, for the first time, did not harden again but began to wilt. Cala’s hips jerked against Dazhis’s buttocks as though pulled upward on strings, and when he fell back to the bed, the room a white haze around him through his tears, he could feel himself, too, softening inside Dazhis.

Later he would remember Dazhis rising off him, even that brief and gentle movement eliciting a whimper from Cala, and Dazhis stretching out beside him to press against him from cheek to ankle. And Dazhis’s soft-breathed words against Cala’s twitching left ear as Cala descended into treacle-thick dream: “My revethmaza. Thou and I, we will be so powerful together.”

—

Cala kept his head in his hands as he recounted the story to Medris. He drew veils of modesty over the prurient aspects, giving his teacher only the barest details thereof. Yet those were not the parts that now afflicted him with shame.

Medris did not speak for a long time after Cala had finished. At length, Cala raised his head and looked into his teacher’s face, and there he saw nothing but a vast compassion.

“Realizest now,” Medris said, “that he seeded thy mind with that question about his family? That he deliberately put thee at ill ease by intimating that to ask it was untoward of thee — so that, then, he could tell thee a complete untruth that wouldst accept more easily?”

Cala stared at him. “A complete untruth?”

“Yes. His father never beat him senseless. His father never did anything of the like to him.”

Cala’s mouth opened slightly. He closed it again, then said, “How can you know for sure? Might his family have denied it all, to protect his father?”

Medris shook his head again, his mouth twisting. “Had it happened, he would not have told a different novice that his father had locked him into a toolshed with no food or water for days, and his eldest brother had to break the door down to rescue him when he was on the brink of death. Or a third that his father flew into a rage and attempted to choke him and had to be pulled off Dazhis by the same brother. Or others that it was his mother who wrought violence upon him, the implement differing in each telling.”

Cala did not reply. The wine churned in his stomach. He tossed the rest of his glass back nonetheless and set it down with an unsteady hand.

“The truth,” Medris said, “as we have had it from Sehalis and others, is that Dazhis’s parents were utterly unremarkable in how they reared their children. Yes, they did raise their hands to them from time to time. It is not our way, but it is hardly rare, even in the Mazan’theileian. That said, they never beat him nearly to death, or starved him, or anything of the kind. They are a very ordinary couple who had more children than they probably should have and who were unprepared when one of their brood developed ambitions that thwarted their desires for him. They loved Dazhis, though they did not understand him. They did not approve of his choice but neither did they stand in his way.

“Aside from all that, Cala, ask thyself this: why would Dazhis simply not have worked on his parents’ minds until they agreed with his every word?”

“But…” Even as he asked, Cala knew he was not seeking truth but, still, resisting it. “…. _could_ he have done so, Osmaza?”

Medris gave him another sympathetic look. “He was dachenmaza, even as a young child. Mind-spelling being as uncommon a talent as it is, he may have been the most brilliant one the Athmaz’are has ever taught. It would have been very simple for him.” The old man’s voice grew dry. “Nor do we believe, Cala, that thou didst not know this in thy heart before asked’st us the question.”

The air went out of Cala’s lungs, and the resistance out of his muscles, all at once. His ears and shoulders fell, and he stared down at the tablecloth. “Nor should you, Osmaza. I am, and I have been, an utter fool.”

“No,” Medris said softly. “Thou wert young and inexperienced. And inclined to believe only the best in others. In a man full grown it may be a failing, although not always. In a boy of seventeen it is not at all a flaw. And, as we have pointed out, wert dealing with a very gifted mind-speller — and an arrant liar. If Sehalis trusted him enough to appoint him nohecharis, thou couldst not be faulted for trusting him as well. It was not thy fault, Cala.”

Cala nodded slowly, eyes still cast down. He did not believe that. But Medris did, and Medris was seldom wrong. If Cala held onto that thought, perhaps he would come to see the matter in the same way.

“It was not thy fault,” Medris repeated. “But wouldst have paid for it nonetheless, as would have thy soldierly counterparts.” He paused. “And Dazhis might not have even permitted you the dignity of the revethvoran. Or, rather, the Princess and the Lord Chancellor might not have, and Dazhis would not have been overly troubled by it.”

Cala shuddered. He did not fear death, though he did not long for it. To become nohecharis was to make one’s own bargain with Ulis, and so, too, in a different way, was to master the revethmaz. He thought perhaps he could even have borne the agony and indignity of a public execution. But that Beshelar and especially Telimezh could have suffered the same fate made him feel sick. He did not wish to consider how his disgrace would have redounded to his family, even if he no longer shared their name.

After a moment, Medris spoke again. His voice was quiet, that deceptive quiet that had not deceived Cala in many years. “Dost understand, then, that canst not protect Edrehasivar an dost not temper thy pity as thou must? That the revethmaz will not avail thee when art blinded to threat?”

Another long moment went by. Then Cala answered, very quietly but from between his teeth: “I do, Osmaza.”

The elder maza walked to where Cala sat and put his hand on his protégé’s bony shoulder. “We believe, for what it is worth, that art entirely adequate to that challenge. We do not know why Cstheio Caireizhasan saw fit to give Dazhis such powers. She must have had her reasons that we cannot fathom. But we have known thee long enough to believe she and Ulis armed thee with revethmazeise talents for a purpose. They understood thy kind nature would prevent thee from using thy gifts for ill, as Dazhis used his. They were not given pause by the idea that it would prevent thee from using them at all.”

He tightened his grip on Cala’s shoulder. “Thou’rt the closest thing I have to a son in this world, Cala,” he said gruffly. “I cannot and will not believe I helped shape the weapon that lies within thee for naught.”

Cala’s throat grew tight again. He blinked against the sting behind his spectacles and put his hand atop Medris’s. “I will not fail Edrehasivar. Or the gods. Or thee, Medris.”

A long moment later, Medris withdrew his hand, and he walked to the corner of the room where his coatrack stood. “Canst walk back across the Ladder unaided?” he asked briskly.

Cala’s laugh was slightly more mirthful than it had been before. “I have done a great many things requiring far more coordination with much more wine, or metheglin, in my blood than I have now.”

“Ah, but when one no longer drinks like a longshoreman — or a novice — his tolerance diminishes greatly.”

The wryness in Medris’s voice drew a half-hearted grin from Cala as he rose to his feet. “Do you speak from experience, Osmaza?”

“As know’st well, we make it a point not to tell such tales of our youth. There are other mazei we have known for decades from whom we suppose thou couldst wheedle such tales with a bit of flattery and a round of drinks. If know’st not their names by now we do not intend to provide them to thee.” Medris had laid Cala’s shabby coat over his arm, and now he politely held it up that Cala might get his arms into it.

“And how could I afford to buy them a round of drinks, having taken a vow of poverty?” Cala pulled the coat tight around himself and began to fasten the buttons. His fingers slipped on the first and third ones; Medris raised one shaggy brow, but he lowered it when Cala managed to get all of them fastened.

“We are certain that, as First Nohecharis, hast the resources to obtain enough coin for that purpose an wert to put thy mind to it,” Medris said drily. “Sober or not, watch thy step on the Ladder; it goes icy before the ground below does, and it cannot be cleared completely while the snow continues to fall.”

“Yes, Osmaza,” Cala said as he pulled on his gloves, with a bit of sing-song to the words and a broad streak of fond amusement as well. But when Medris placed his hand on the doorknob, Cala’s face grew solemn. “In all sooth, Medris… thank you.”

“Thank us with thy actions,” Medris said, in his quiet voice again.

Jaw set and chin forward, Cala nodded. He pulled his hood down and, without one more look back at his old teacher, shouldered his way out into the roar of the wind and the pelt of the snow.


End file.
